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Friday, August 22, 2014

Riders vs. Lions: Guaranteed Win Night

Sunday the Riders travel out west for a
showdown with the BC Lions. Oddly enough this will be the last time we see the
Lions in the regular season. This will be our chance at redemption after they
beat us in week 3. We had them on the ropes in the first half and then
inexplicably went to hell in the second half on route to an embarrassing loss. Fear
not, after an exhaustive inquiry it was determined that it was all Hugh
Charles’ fault so we should be good to go this time around. Actually, we
haven’t lost since cutting Charles so maybe they were onto something.

Lions President Dennis Skulsky has
guaranteed a win. The move is both a good marketing move (it has generated some
buzz for the game) and a terrible football move. The Lions won’t gain any extra
motivation from it but it will piss off the Riders… and that defense is not a
group of guys I would want to piss off.

It goes without saying that the primary
objective here is emerge with a win (no matter how ugly). However, another
thing to keep in mind is the tie breaker (as crazy as it is to be discussing
that in August). I expect the West standings to be super close so any leg up
you can have in terms of tie breakers will be very valuable. If we beat BC by
14 points or more we take the season series. Follow that up with a win on
Labour Day and we would have the tie breaker over 2 of our 4 division rivals
which would be solid footing at the halfway point of the season.

The Lions started the season like hot
garbage (is that worse than cold garbage?). Their first 2 games were bad. They
lost to Troy Smith for pete sake! But over the last 6 games (starting when they
beat us) they have been looked like a completely different team. Just take a
look at how they’ve improved both defensively and offensively (where the
biggest improvement as occurred).

- In the first 2 games the defense was
allowing 143 yds rushing, 283 yards passing and over 25 points per game. Over
the last 6 that has dropped to 91 yards rushing, 177 passing and 19 points per
game

- In the first 2 games the offense averaged
219 yards passing, an abysmal 68 yards rushing (with Harris and Logan that’s
just staggering) and 15 points per game. Over the last 6 that has risen to 280
yards passing, 134 rushing and 28 points per game.

- Also consider that the Lions turned the
ball over 9 times in the first 2 games and only 9 times in the next 6.

My caveat is that their opponent over those
6 included Montreal, Hamilton and Toronto on 4 days rest. They did beat Calgary
so it wasn’t all a soft schedule.

Offensively I have no clue what to expect
in terms of QB. The general rule of thumb is “once you go black, you never go
back” but if you watched last game, you saw the Lions employ the lesser known
“once you go black you randomly insert a ginger at odd times” strategy. Whether
it’s Lulay or Glenn under centre, the primary objective has to be limiting
Andrew Harris. The man single-handedly embarrassed our entire defense in week 3
and you simply can’t expect to beat the Lions if you struggle to bring down
Harris on first contact.I expect the D
to come out looking to avenge the week 3 embarrassment, hopefully that
translates into sound tackling. Priority 2 is ensuring Arceneaux doesn’t burn
us with a big play. Week in week out the guy shows he is a threat to score at
anytime. If I’m the Lions I’m looking to get him matched up on Macho. Outside
of Arceneaux the Lions have a decent set of receivers but no one that I don’t
think we can handle. Overall the key match-up though is in the trenches. No
team has allowed more sacks than the Lions. I don’t think I need to remind you
about what our DL can do. If our DL can control the line of scrimmage it will
make life harder on Harris and it will make life miserable on Glenn/Lulay. I
expect the Lions to scheme extra protection towards Chick which could mean a
less productive day for him (maybe only one or 2 sacks) but the rest of our DL
will benefit from the attention he demands. At least 4 sacks overall is my
guess… nay it’s my guarantee.

For our offense, we face the stingiest pass
defense in the League… which suits us just fine because passing isn’t one of
those things we are big on any way. If I’m the Lions (or any team for that
matter), the strategy against the Riders would be stack the line and focus on
eliminating the run until the Riders to prove they can you beat through the
air. Thing is I think we can beat
them through the air…in theory… though even communism works, in theory. Unlike
the headshaking decision against the Als to mostly forgo the run in the first
half, even though we are likely to run into a defensive wall at first we still
need to commit to running early and often. We can’t shy away from a stiff run
blocking front, we have the talent on the OL and RB to go toe to toe with
anyone on the ground so let’s prove it. We put up 90 yards in one half against
them last time… do it again (minus the whole untimely fumble leading to
unemployment part). Key to running effectively will be getting blockers on
Elimimian. Left unblocked he will terrorize our run game. While our primary
attack should be “pound it down their throat”, I think we also need to get
creative to slow down that talented front 7. Play action TE leakouts could be
effective given the aggressiveness of the LBs. I would also like to see us try
and get Ford the ball in space on swing passes and what not (I realize that his
catching ability is questionable but we gotta try). One other thing I think
could be very effective is 2 back sets. Given that Messam is Canadian it would
be easy to get both him and Ford on at the same time that gives the defense 2 things
to pay attention to vs. focusing all on one guy. Mix it up with both of them
seeing the ball and then every so often is we toss is a Durant run I think that
would go for big yards.

I don’t see us passing often (bold
prediction I know). I stand by my ongoing conviction that JR LaRose isn’t a
very good safety. We didn’t have Getzlaf the first time around (we were still
suffering through the Riley experiment) and I think he is a guy that can really
exploit that middle. As big as Bagg has been for us lately I see a quieter
night for him. BC’s DBs are very aggressive and those wide-side passes scare
me. Work the inside, run lots and I think we are about due for a long bomb to
Taj for a TD.

BC Place is a tough place to play and
anything less than our best level of play just won’t cut it. That said, we
aren’t playing as bad as people would lead you to believe. We keep finding ways
to win and if you look at what we did in the 1st half last time we played
you’ll see that we can beat BC. As much as our last couple wins have been ugly
they have shown that we can fight through adversity and emerge victorious. That
will come in handy because we are in for adversity in BC. Expect a hard
hitting, tightly contested game. It will take a 4th quarter comeback
but…